Recollection
by The Villain's Vindication
Summary: Post-reunion. John, in coming to terms with Sherlock's affection for him, collects memories. But unlike his flatmate, John doesn't have a Mind Palace. He remembers things the way most people do, in fits and spurts. To him, chunks of time are taken in and recorded by his senses: smells, visions, tastes, touches. And always... always... he remembers Sherlock. Slash, Johnlock


Recollection

By: The Villain's Vindication

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

AN: Written in a stream of consciousness format, so sentence structure is basically thrown out the window for artistic purposes. Also, too many stories rely entirely on dialog, so I focused on writing a story almost completely without conversation.

Each ellipsis between the two lines indicated an indeterminate gap in time.

* * *

...

* * *

John would remember it as a kiss.

That's not what happened of course, only how he'd think back on it later.

The room was painted lavender and smelled like pancakes, the room where he stopped breathing. The suspect had suffocated him.

Killed him.

Time was then pain, seconds splintered like shards of ice trust into his brain.

John, even then, even without a breath to breathe in his body, eyes sagged shut in this quasi-death, even then he knew the moment Sherlock swirled into the room. The sound of the detective knees hitting the floor beside him resounded in the vacancy of his mind where yet the dust would fall in just the next moment if not for the lips on his.

Sherlock breathed for him for the entirety of seven minutes… eons really, in the suspension between worlds… between the ticks of the hands.

It wasn't a kiss. Obvious, as Sherlock would say. John, as a doctor, was well versed in the entirely clinical nature of the procedure that his friend employed to resuscitate him.

Still…

For that time so short, so long, Sherlock breathed life into John Watson.

_Please God, let me live._

And for some reason, he could only ever remember it as a kiss.

* * *

...

* * *

He had a star in his hair.

At least that's what his hairdresser had called it.

Fetching even, she had said.

A white starburst on his right temple, just at his hairline. Just another new splash of color in the patchwork quilt that was his hair. Nearly all the colors together, blonde, brown, gray, white, and as such not really any color at all.

Sand, dirt, dust, snow, as if on the day he was born the doctor dropped him on the earth head first and whatever it touched had just stuck there and began to grow.

Most days he ignored the bit of white just the same as he ignored all the other spots of color in his hair. He'd run a cursory comb through it in the mornings, get it cut once in awhile when it began to annoy him. It wasn't important… or at least it hadn't been… before.

The white had bloomed there after The Fall. To John it seemed to have shown up within that same twenty-four hours, though he knew that was impossible.

And now, so much time had passed since that dreadful day, but the white remained. There were times John caught Sherlock looking at it with such a pained expression that John seriously considered dying his hair for the first time in his life. They hadn't ever talked about it, but they didn't have to. Sherlock knew he had been the cause, knew that, despite the new trust and solidarity and forgiveness of their friendship, that he could never really repair John.

That a little piece of him was different now in a very permanent way.

John turned away from his reflection in the mirror.

It was the death of a star, frozen.

* * *

...

* * *

Panic, John panicked quietly.

Because he wasn't supposed to be here.

Well... he was. It was his home after all, but he was supposed to still be out walking Gladstone. The pat pat pat of rain water dripping from his coat sounded like gun shots in the silence.

He stood, watching through the crack in Sherlock's doorway. The man's privacy relinquished unknowingly by the partially opened door.

John panicked as the liquid disappeared into Sherlock's veins, disappearing by the slow press of the plunger. He didn't know what it was, couldn't even distinguish it's color from this angle, but John was certain that whatever it was, it didn't belong in the human body. Not in Sherlock's. Not in anyone's.

The man lay propped up by pillows on his bed and... he was completely naked.

His skin looked bright, glowing, in the sea of black linens. Sherlock's modesty was kept only by a smooth leg. Its knee bent up just that much. His ghostly pale fingers flexed, encouraging the blood flow in his invaded arm. John watched on, feeling impotent, as Sherlock pulled out a bio-hazard bag to dispose of the needle in. Probably both lifted from Saint Bartholomew's.

And John swayed where he stood because he didn't know what was in Sherlock.

He saw more than heard the sigh that left his friend in a great huff. Relief, John assumed, though from what he wasn't sure.

The walls of the apartment where close. The rain crawling down the window, disrupting the light of day and casting murky shadows along Sherlock's body.

God he just seemed to go on for miles. Exposed.

Sherlock let his head fall back, utterly relaxed, his swan throat on display. All of him perfectly on display, if John was going to be honest.

Which he wasn't, because he didn't have time for this.

He was busy panicking.

But this was something private, something not his business, something secret, something he definitely couldn't do anything about at this point, it was already to late.

Something he shouldn't stand here watching.

So John took his panic with him back out into the gray London rain.

* * *

...

* * *

The steam from his tea curled up and round, clouding John's vision.

Missus Hudson sat with Harry and her new wife, Mary Morstan-Watson, on the couch chatting about this or that. To John it was all boring, but his gaze flickered over to Sherlock who was perched in his chair staring at the pair of them with rampant amazement.

He hadn't ever told Sherlock that Harriet was his twin.

Sherlock was utterly fascinated that there were two John Watsons in the world. Two. No matter how he explained that he and Harry were separate, unique individuals. The detective took in Harry's appearance with a focus not often used outside of cases.

Her hair was just like Johns, unable to settle on what color it really wanted to be. It was cut very short, but in a manner far more style conscious than his own. Her eyes were equally ambiguous in color, a blue abyss flecked with other shades. They were the same height she was toned but not muscular as John; her breasts humble in size though unlike Molly they suited her. Even with her expensive haircut her clothes were comfort focused: a crisp white, long sleeved button up under a red cable knit vest and jeans. As the two sat in the living room, they were veritable clones.

John took a sip of his tea.

That was what he saw anyways. He wondered what Sherlock could see.

He hadn't kept the fact that she was his twin from Sherlock for any particular reason other than, perhaps, that he enjoyed knowing things that Sherlock didn't. There wasn't any mystery here to solve, but Sherlock seemed to think differently. Maybe this would by his gift to him this holiday. God knows the man was impossible to shop for and, more often than not, disliked any gift bought for him.

Maybe this intriguing information was enough.

He took another sip, his nose nudging the small candy cane he was using to stir the tea. Its pungent smell, minty sweet, flirted with his taste buds as a bit of it melted into his drink. This was the first Christmas party where he had his whole family together in one place.

It was... nice.

After awhile he looked into the bottom of his cup, empty but for the skeletal remains of the candy. The cold porcelain stark in the cozy air of the room.

John couldn't figure out why it left him so unfulfilled.

* * *

...

* * *

Long, quickquickquick, looong note.

Long, quickquickquick, looong note.

He had never heard this song before.

Sherlock sway back and forth, back and forth as he played. His new blood red silk robe flickering with the caught notes. John set his paper aside as the music created a strange vacuum between them. The noise made his insides twist they way they did when he first heard the song written for The Woman.

Sherlock was in a Black Mood again. Hadn't spoken for days. And now there was this.

Slow whine of melded notes, almost like a question.

Into a slipping sliding dive of pitch, almost like crying.

John felt his heart beat in his chest, the thrum of blood and percussion in his body. His heart hurt for his friend, but he did nothing but listen on. He wished he could protect Sherlock from this, from his demons. From himself.

John had a feeling this composition was for him.

He knew Sherlock held a certain… regard… for him. Something in that smile that he shared with no one else. With all he demanded and took from John, he was really amazed how this aspect went so unspoken. Silent.

Not that he would be able to give that to Sherlock anyway.

There was something about the man's brilliant mind, sarcastic humor, chocolate curls, and piercing eyes that made John… wobbly. John was straight, but that road just… wobbled a bit whenever Sherlock was near.

But he couldn't ever be what Sherlock wanted, not really.

So he just listened to his song, and hoped that would be enough.

(Song: "I Don't Think About You Anymore, But I Don't Think About You Any Less" by Hungry Ghost)

* * *

...

* * *

Sometimes his life didn't come with any poetry.

John looked at the cards in his hand and cursed himself for a fool.

Sherlock was away in Sweden for a case, so that left John without danger and without the massive intellect he had come to rely on to counter his idiocy. He had just lost a ton of money.

Money he didn't have.

He had always had a weakness for gambling. He refused to call it an addiction because it wasn't.

It wasn't.

It was just a bit of fun.

Except for right now.

He thread his finger through his hair and yanked on it. Feeling the tingling pain that flared up, a counterpoint to all his anger, his humiliation, his stupid, stupid, stupid...

John's mobile buzzed in his pocket. It wasn't Sherlock, he never called... well except for the once...

He plucked it from his coat to see who it was.

A blocked number.

So Mycroft then.

Apparently Mycroft was willing to help him in this. It was always for a price though, with Sherlock's brother. But he had no other option, he just didn't have the money. He shouldn't have played. Stupid. John didn't waste the effort trying to figure out how Mycroft had known what was happening. The man was an information genie as far as John could tell.

As he answered the phone he sighed at the thought of all the legwork he would have to do to pay this off.

He passed the cards calmly back to the dealer.

Sometimes there were just the facts.

* * *

...

* * *

He stood beside Sherlock, just out of arm's reach.

They had broken into a church. The quiet of the night heavy in the sacred space. Sherlock walked in and out of the shadows, flitting about in the faint colors of the stained glass window on the hunt for evidence as always. Being here, John drifted in all Sherlock was.

Martyr. Miracle Worker. Fallen Angel. Messiah Risen.

Hero.

Blasphemous thoughts, if ever he had them, but he wasn't religious and he was certain Sherlock was atheistic, so he supposed it didn't much matter. Sherlock would never know of these monikers anyways. John knew his worship of the man was far too obvious as it was. Sherlock didn't need his ego pet all the way to God metaphors.

Light slanted over the man as his eager energy seemed to bleed from him. He stood now, still as death. John chuckled to himself, telling Sherlock he looked like a vampire there next to the cross. Sherlock said nothing, but raised his hand to run his fingertips down the great line of wood. There was a peculiar look on his face that made John's mind run back over what he just said.

Rarely eats.

Rarely sleeps.

Has a job that makes him work most often in the night.

Has an obsessive amount of knowledge on death.

Pale as a corpse.

Near supernatural ability to know what people are thinking.

...No, John found himself whispering into the pews. Sherlock turned his head towards him, crooked at an unnatural angle. His mouth smiled wide, wide, too wide, full of knives for teeth.

No. No. No. No.

And then he was on him. John's arms trapped to his sides by powerful hands, cold breath coiling up his neck prickling ice at his hair. Sherlock's tongue sweeping out, long, obscene, followed in measure of seconds by teeth, fangs, fangs, _razors_. Cutting him. Piercing him.

Inside him.

White hot pain flooding his muscles, flaring through his veins. John felt his breath chocked off in pants, in whimpers.

And then the pull, drawing out his blood, drawing out his life. One mouth full and then another.

Sherlock drinking him alive.

John woke up with a shout. Struggling frantically with his tangle of bed sheets, he fell with a painful thump off his bed. Sweat made the duvet stick to him, cloying. His breath shook in his lungs and his heart had left him behind and was apparently off jogging in Hyde Park somewhere. John looked wide eyed around the room, getting only the barest hold on reality when Sherlock burst into his room, guns blazing, obviously expecting an attacker of some sort.

John sat in shock on the floor, burning with embarrassment and with... something else...

God, Freud would have a field day with that dream.

Sherlock stood there, just out of arm's reach. He lowered the weapon and raised a royal eyebrow at him.

John never before wished so hard for the ground to open up and swallow him.

* * *

...

* * *

Most of the time John was nothing but grateful whenever he could get Sherlock to eat something... anything.

But this was just...

It was breakfast and Sherlock was sitting at the table eating... breakfast, John supposed. But as he leaned over his friend to look at the dubious contents of his bowl, John found himself quite speechless. Sherlock just looked up at him innocently, his spoon dangling from his mouth.

He was eating cereal. John was fairly sure that's what it was anyways.

A mix of some god awful children's cereals, if the mess of rainbow and glow-in-the-dark colored pieces were anything to go by. But the real clincher that made it so John was helpless to look away, much in the way one cannot help but slow down to look at the wreckage of a car crash, was that it wasn't swimming in milk.

The cereal was drowning in a vast puddle of _honey_.

John vaguely recalled a shouting match he and Sherlock had a few days previous about the lack of milk in the flat. Again. And that John told him off about using it too much.

But he felt a bit queasy as Sherlock proceeded to shovel more of that monstrosity into his mouth, and realized he may have made a grave error.

Graver still, as Sherlock filled a spoonful and raised it up, presenting it to John.

John simultaneously had the realization that his absolute inability to say no to his friend was possibly now life threatening. The spoon was shoved into his mouth unceremoniously. He ate the mass of sugar without complaint, it was his fault after all, and mentally listed the things he would need in case either of them fell into a diabetic coma.

Because the thing was... it actually tasted good.

Giggling, he made himself a bowl, feeling positively five years old. He expected to regret this decision later. But as he sat there eating pure sweetness, he told his flatmate what a fucking genius he was and listened to Sherlock's laughter join his own, John knew it would be worth it.

This was exactly the best way to start a day.

* * *

...

* * *

There were times, John thought, that Sherlock's particular brand of caring was hard to bare.

John let out an aggrieved sigh as an umbrella then clocked him on the head. He was stuck in the closet.

A closet.

Not _the_ closet.

A cupboard not fit for human occupation, full of the smell of mothballs and old trainers. Sherlock had spun around and locked him inside for John could comprehend what was happening. The big drama queen was out there on the case that they were to be solving _together_. His need to keep John out of it didn't even make sense. It didn't seem like a dangerous case in the least.

A young accountant had come to them, fresh out of school which assured that no one would take his concerns seriously. On accident, he happened to look over the accounts of some math professor that had recently transferred to London in order to teach. The man was considered a proper genius, yet despite this seemed humble. The man simply kept to his calculations, away from the public eye and adoration.

But somehow he was making loads of money.

This accountant didn't see any official channels through which the money was arriving, so the case was really just suspected money laundering. What risk would Sherlock be putting John in if he took him on the case?

John shoved some coats aside and made himself a little room to sit down. Hid dodgy leg had begun to ache in time with his confused worry.

John pulled out his phone in a fit of boredom. Maybe he could look up more about the case from here, maybe help in some round-about way. But staring at the blank page of the search engine, John realized with a start that he never had heard the name of the professor they were to investigate. Sherlock had, somehow, found the case fascinating from the start and had cut off the man's story before he was finished, before he could get out a name. John frowned suspiciously from his makeshift bunker. It couldn't be that hard to find. He searched for new math professors at Oxford and got plenty of hits. At the top of the page was a photograph. The eyes were dark, seemingly vacant, but the warm smile was genuine enough. The man had silver hair and a trim beard, and though John had never seen him before in his life there was something familiar about his face.

His eyes skimmed down to the name.

Doctor Philip J. Moriarty.

Mrs. Hudson found him and released him in a fright from his shouting. There had even been a story published online, just in the last day or else he would have _known_, about how the good professor had to overcome the reputation brought on by his little brother Jim. As was Mycroft to Sherlock, this man was to the younger Moriarty they had fought. The real Moriarty. The one who doesn't do the legwork or get his hands dirty. The one who is actually sane enough to run a worldwide criminal empire. Cold and distant, but in control.

Later that night when Sherlock returned to 221B, John punched him in the face before clinging onto him for dear life. Traditional British male stoicism could just go shove it in this case.

Sherlock said nothing, just stood placidly in his embrace. John gripped him all the stronger, tight to his chest.

Sherlock wasn't going to die again for this man. Not for him. Not for anyone.

John wouldn't allow it.

And Sherlock was just going to have to bare with that because John was not leaving him alone.

Not ever.

* * *

...

* * *

He looked on as the snow drifted to crown Sherlock.

Modern Grecian laurels.

Bits of frozen crystal, infinitely intricate and delicate, settling to frost the layers of dark curls like something from a painting.

John allowed himself a moment to wonder if he could get away with writing about it. God knows, Sherlock made enough fun of the e-mails he sent to his girlfriends. John really didn't want to find out just how Sherlock would rip him apart if he found such sentimental rubbish about himself floating around.

He guessed he could write it in the personal blog he kept beneath his bed. It wasn't a _diary_.

It wasn't.

Just a blog that exists outside of the computer. Anyways, there always seemed to be something more about the writing when it was done in his own hand.

His focus was stolen from him once again as Sherlock's eyes crinkled in amusement. Gladstone had just growled pathetically at a fellow pedestrian. The fat lout, John couldn't help his smile as he reprimanded the dog. Looking back up to Sherlock, he found the detective's eyes had gone nearly white in the bright light reflected up from the snow. The only color in them a hint of blue or green around the edges, John always found it hard to tell which it was.

There was that black fleck though, that spot, that freckle, in his right eye, just a touch above his pupil. The one physical imperfection the man had.

There was something charming about it.

John blinked away the thought, pulling his leather jacket in tighter around himself to protect him from it.

* * *

...

* * *

He had to yank the stubborn blanket out from the rucksack.

It had been a gag gift from Lastrade some time ago. It was a good full sized throw, but it was a obnoxious orange color. A parody of a shock blanket.

Today had been peculiar insofar that it was completely ordinary. He had the day off from working at the clinic and there weren't any cases. Moriarty had left them blessedly alone. He had bigger things to concern himself with than messing with the world's only consulting detective. That first case had been a simple warning, one that Sherlock, for once, heeded.

He remembered so many odd little things about his life, from the extraordinary to the uselessly inane. It made him wonder if he would remember boring, regular today.

John hummed a mindless tune as he tossed the blanket into the wash. Sherlock had done... well... _something_ to one corner of it in the name of science. He could only hope the stain would come out.

Turning back to the bag, he found a bit of paper sticking out of the dirty laundry. John, feeling a bit like a kid with their hand in a cookie jar, looked about before swiping up the paper. Sherlock was still in the shower. Most often it took the man hours before he emerged from the toilet. He was impeccably fastidious when it came to personal hygiene, so John had plenty of time to snoop.

Unfolding the parchment, he discovered mostly incomprehensible gibberish. Bits of numbers and code written at a severe slant. John could decipher the word Speedball out of the mess, followed by a formula of some sort. It didn't help him better understand any of it.

He had no idea what that was.

There was also what looked to be a crude sketch of a Y-incision as from an autopsy and something about a polygraph. John chuckled a bit at the thought of Sherlock taking a lie-detector test. He could probably trick the machine six ways to Sunday. Turning the page over he felt the smile drift from his face.

Again most of it was unreadable, but there were a few clear bits:

"My dear John"

...

"Basically... I wish that you loved me"

...And shit, now he was crying.

Fuck.

He couldn't help it. His insides wrenched. This wasn't meant for his eyes, he knew. He shouldn't have looked. Damn his curiosity.

Then behind John, a floorboard creaked.

_Fuck_.

Sherlock reached over and gently pulled the page from his hand. Apologies of all sorts crowded John's mouth, but Sherlock didn't seem to be asking for any. The detective knew it was his own fault for leaving such evidence in his trouser pocket.

John could hardly believe it when Sherlock donned his Maybe-I-Should-Apologize face. How could the man think to be sorry for upsetting John when John was the one trespassing, the one in the wrong?

Everything was just so twist-turned around.

Rusted daggers sliced at his heart as Sherlock reverently refolded the paper, whispering mutely that it was from a song he heard once in a cab.

That it didn't mean anything.

John found himself shaking his head. His tear tracks cold down his face turning wetter because he knew that song. Now that he had given it a moment of thought, he recognized the lyric. He knew it and all it said and how much it did, in fact, mean something.

Mean everything.

John wobbled.

"I do!" John's mouth rebelled, spewing out everything before his approval. He just couldn't stop himself. John sobbed, holding his hands out to his sides in helplessness. "I do everything I can to get that smile out of you. I love that fucking ridiculous coat you wear with the collar popped up. You've got a spot in your eye that I just can't _not_ look at. I know exactly how you take your tea so bloody loaded with sugar you can almost feel the grains of it in your mouth. I just..."

He shook his head again and covered his face with his hand.

He couldn't give Sherlock what he wanted. The man would consume him, chew him up and spit him out, and there would be nothing left. He would never be enough. Nothing was ever enough for Sherlock.

His shoulders quivered as he sobbed again, utterly defenseless.

"I do... love you."

The buzzer on the washer went off, cutting loudly into John's thoughts. He chuckled weakly and turned back to the clothes. Grabbing them violently from the machine and shoving them into the dryer. Huffing and angry and scared and upset and _wobbly_...

A pair of spindly arms curled across his middle, gently pulling him into an embrace.

John froze in place, his hands griping the edge of the dryer.

It was awkward and weird and warm and important.

John remembered the non-kiss of so long ago. He wondered if they would now, actually kiss, that is.

Sherlock had a stupidly perfect mouth, and he could all to easily imagine the kisses. The careful press of their mouths, the gentle suckling, the slow slide of tongue against each other between parted lips, the sharing of heated, damp, panting breaths. He stopped pretending he hadn't thought of it before, wouldn't let that fact disturb him anymore.

This _is_ what he wanted.

But Sherlock didn't push John, didn't ask for anything. He just stood there holding him. The hands around him gripped tighter, as John felt tremors go through the body pressed against his. He was certain Sherlock was crying there behind him, too happy for words but also probably shocked into silence by John's admission.

John let his fingers coil around a bit of the blanket that stuck out of the hastily closed dryer, bright orange against the white.

They stood together, breathing their breaths in quiet.

This was inevitable, it seems. John did his best to escape Sherlock's gravitation, to resist, to deny, and still it only took the smallest wobble to spiral into him.

John lifted his other hand with all the bravery left in him and tentatively rested it on Sherlock's. The detective immediately opened up and wriggled his fingers so that they were entwined.

They fit.

From the start, they fit.

(Song: "The Nicest Thing" by Kate Nash)

* * *

End

* * *

AN: Soooo I think that's it, unless some other little drabbly memories start to bother me again. This story is also a response to all the "something really crazy has to happen for them to get together" stories. John and Sherlock have extraordinary experiences everyday. I think it would be in the ordinary and the boring that they would come together because honestly they never have that. Not in the canon anyway.

Really do go listen to the songs in the story. Both are easily found on youtube and are very dear to my heart. The one for the violin you only need to hear about the first minute and a half of it as it mostly just repeats itself.

Also, in case you don't know Speedball is a slurry of cocaine and morphine (or heroin) that is injected. I imagine that this is Sherlock's drug of choice.

I hope you enjoyed this. What was your favorite part? Please please please review. It means so much.

-Vindication


End file.
